Hello 2012!

So here we are in a brand new year. If you believe the whole Aztec thing, this is going to be the year that the whole world comes to an end, apparently just a couple days before my 27th birthday. At least I’ll die young and leave a (semi)beautiful corpse.

Holiday Sundries

So I had an overall quite nice holiday, having spent it most of it with Kazi and his family. I’ll say one thing though, I don’t know how you people in warmer climates put up with a non-white Christmas. It was downright depressing to look out on Christmas Day and not see a single patch of snow on the ground. It was just…so wrong.

Of course now that I’m back in Canada, it’s bloody freezing outside but hey, there’s lots of the fluffy white stuff and what better excuse to stay indoors to do things? 🙂

Good thing that I now have so many things to do inside. There’s a bunch of books that I’ll need to wade through, including the entire Hunger Games set. I also received a Kindle, which had only been put on my wishlist as a last minute “oh this might be neat” thought, but it’s turned out to be completely awesome. I went on a bit of a spending spree and have bought about 10 books for it so far, and I have plans for much more. I made the mistake of finally taking a look at Goodreads and I now have over 2 dozen books lined up to get. I’ll be poor but I’ll be one happy reader. 😀

And then the games, oh my the games. I got Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2, Fable 3, AND Skyrim. Considering I haven’t even finished Dragon Age: Origins and Fable 2, and I haven’t bought the first Mass Effect…my butt is going to start taking root in my computer chair.

Skyrim is almost evil for me because I MUST EXPLORE EVERYTHING! I was level 9 by the time I even got to Whiterun because I was continually distracted by shiny objects along the way and would end up wandering in a completely random direction. It did however lead to me uncovering the first word of a Shout for calling animals to my aid, one that no one else I know had found yet. When I told him, Kazi commented, “You know, it has to be fate that the first shout you ever found was THAT one.” I simply grinned and nodded knowingly.

WoW, I’ve been busy (I made a funny)

On the WoW front, raiding’s been going along nice and smooth. We managed to finish the first tier of Cata raids before they released the Dragon Soul, so we actually got to head into the Firelands once or twice while it was still “current” content. We’re still in the Firelands but I’m cool with it because we’re making progress. Everyone’s decided that Baleroc is kinda cool, Beth’tilac is pain and agony, and Lord Rhyolith is the bane of our [insert long stream of profanity here] existence. We’re working on Alysrazor right now to avoid Lord RNGolith for the meantime. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve seen these people put so much hatred towards a boss.

I’ve managed to solve most of the issues I’ve been having as raid lead. People who are signing up pretty much show up on time now. I’ve also been able to make sure that everyone signs up by posting the next raid on the calendar at the end of each current raid. They all just sign up immediately and we go on our merry ways. Breaks are also becoming a lot better now thanks to a suggestion from the guild leader. I give them a 15 minute break every 1 hour and a half or so, which gives them time for a bio and/or snack.

Strats are still a difficult point for us. I’m the sort of person who learns something by doing it, so without actually having tried these bosses before…I just sort of read strats off WoWPedia. Which at times has lead to a lot of confusion due to the verboseness of them. If anyone knows where to find some excellent point-form “never been there before” raid guides, I would love to see that link.

Let it not be said that we don’t have a fun time in there however. Everytime we face Beth’tilac, we have to convince one of our DKs to go in there yes one more time, because he’s terrified of spiders. All the raid members throw everything from gentle coaxings to joking threats at the poor guy.

And then there was our first attempt at Alysrazor where we had just finished clearing the trash. I hadn’t even begun my explanation before the event started, because our rogue simple COULD NOT resist clicking the shiny feather lying on the ground. I yelled out “Oh shit!” over Mumble and began throwing out orders as fast I could. It was of course complete bloody chaos and everyone was like “I don’t know what’s going on!” and I was like “I don’t know either!”. We eventually ended up wiping but everyone was laughing by then so it was all good. So now forever after, that shiny feather will be hung over the rogue’s head. At least until she does something else silly. 😉

Oh yeah, and a big announcement

So I suppose this is kind of important and all…everyone knows Kazi, yes? The long-distance boyfriend who very occasionally posts on here, sometimes plays a shaman and sometimes a DK, my partner in alt leveling, gaming, tabletopping, and crime in general?

Well, he proposed to me when I went up to visited him. I said yes. So we’re engaged and all that.

And when I tell people he proposed and they ask, “Did you say yes?”, I try to keep a straight face as I say, “No, I just thought I’d take the ring anyways because might as well put it to good use, right?”